August 5, 2001

Death Valley Summers Attract Heat
Seekers

By EVELYN NIEVES

EATH VALLEY, Calif. — The heat travels from the desert floor in thick, undulating waves that hit your eyes and nose and ears like an oven blast, over and over, all day long.

It is heat that the residents of Death Valley — about 500 of them in an area the size of Connecticut — defer to in high summer, dodging its temper in air-conditioned trailers and airy cotton clothes. And it is the same heat that the tourists with bare shoulders and Bermuda shorts come here to defy, the way some people climb a mountain because it is there.

Each year, more of them arrive. As an excuse, they mention the Gold Rush history and the borax mines. They also mention the sights — like Badwater, the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet below sea level, or Dante's View, with 360-degree views of the valley's rainbow-colored rock mountains and salt basins. But the first thing most people want to see in the hottest spot in North America is the thermometer.

"In winter," said Chuck Clark, who drives a van to help visitors get around at the Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch Resort, "the weather is just perfect — 90 degrees in the day, 70 degrees at night. The summer? Well, it's not for everybody, I can tell you that. It's hot."

The other day, the temperature was 105 degrees at 10 a.m., heading to a high of 126. The temperature had been much the same for a week and promised to remain that way for another week. This was peak summer tourist weather. The Badwater Ultramarathon had brought 72 athletes to the valley for a brutal 135- mile run through the desert, and the inn and resort, which look like palm- covered mirages in the middle of the desert, were hopping.

Long lines wound around the breakfast buffet at the ranch's steakhouse. Two busloads of French and German tourists crowded the visitor center down the road. Families spread maps over the hoods of their white rental cars. And two boys, each about 10 years old, tried to fry an egg in the parking lot.

The ranch, run privately by Amfac Parks and Resorts, is set up like a pioneer village, including a general store, saloon and restaurant.

Summer was once the slow season. Most of the park's campgrounds close, the backpackers head to cooler vistas and the curiosity seekers from Las Vegas, about 150 miles away, stay put in the relative cool of the metropolis. Local residents then, most of them employees of the federal government or the Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch Resort, would have the sand dunes, starry nights and open roads to themselves. Then about 10 years ago, Europeans began flocking here in the summer.

Now, even the Furnace Creek ranch golf course (billed as the "lowest golf course in the world" at 214 feet below sea level) is booked full. The guests try to outsmart the sun, sneaking onto the green at dawn when the temperature is in the 90's.

At Badwater, the most popular spot in Death Valley, tourists were walking on the desert flats, sweating buckets as they posed by the sign that said "Badwater, 282 feet/66 meters below sea level."

"What's amazing about the place is that it's so quiet," said John W. Jones, an air-conditioner maker from Lexington, Ky., who took the trip from Las Vegas with two friends.

"Too quiet," said his friend Robin Patrick looking miserable and as wet as if she had just come out of the shower.

But Toni Jepson, a manager at the Furnace Creek Inn, begged to differ. Like most residents of Death Valley, she can point out all sorts of sounds that visitors cannot. "In the summer," she said, "there is wind."

But for Chuck Clark, the van driver, winter is the best season. "Winter is just beautiful here," said Mr. Clark, a refugee from Los Angeles, where he lived for 46 years, working for a defense contractor. Like most of the permanent residents, most of whom work in one of the outposts (except for the tiny Timbisha Shoshone tribe, which just this year was granted rights to 7,000 acres of its ancestral homeland), he is a transplant drawn to the desert by its rough beauty, dead silences and indifference to the rest of the world.

Mr. Clark, after hitting a couple of rough patches in his life's road — divorce and a job layoff — came here about three years ago to take a new direction. Summer is not the draw, just part of the deal.

Residents of the area learn to appreciate everything they have got here. Like all 100 employees there, Mr. Clark lives on the campus. Mr. Clark considers himself lucky to have a room with his own bath — for $100 a month. As an employee, he said, he gets two free meals a day, pays $2.50 for dinner and takes full advantage of the company parties to get his fill of the social life.

Mr. Clark occasionally goes to Pahrump, Nev., the nearest town at 65 miles away, and does not mind that there are no supermarkets, theaters or malls between here and there.

"I just love it here," he said. "The only thing I don't care for is the summer." He opened his van door to let out a guest and closed it fast behind so the heat would not sneak inside. "I hate the heat."